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.....’but at least has FEC records to bolster the assertion that Baker served in a finance role of some sort with Barack’s campaign for the Senate. What is curious about the Churcher piece, which appears to be sympathetic to Obama by portraying him as the victim of an impending smear, is the note that a London law firm contacted the mail. They were threatened with a libel suit, so why the hell did they write the piece? If it is not news then why put it out and draw attention to an unnamed woman that is simply going to fuel the search for the woman in question?

It is true that Vera Baker had a business in Washington raising campaign funds. She was partners with another African American woman, Muthoni Wambu, Baker Wambu & Associates, a political fund-raising firm. Guess who Wambu works for now? Joe Biden. The Politico had a story about Baker Wambu’s business challenges in May 2007:

That’s what happened when Muthoni Wambu and Vera Baker, both African-American women, set up their own fundraising shop, Baker Wambu & Associates, in 2000.

Though it was never its owners’ intention, Baker Wambu soon found itself a top fundraising firm for the Congressional Black Caucus. Their only non-black clients were Reps. Mike Honda (D-Hawaii) and Louise McIntosh Slaughter (D-N.Y.). Not a single white male politician linked up with the firm in its five years.

“We didn’t aim to be (a strictly CBC firm) at all. But we started to look and say, ‘Huh, that’s a good committee, that’s a big deal.’ … A lot of CBC members were really open to having a firm like ours raise money for them,” said Wambu, now deputy political director for Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Democratic presidential campaign. “In many ways, they were overlooked as resources. Businesses hadn’t pitched to them.”

Here’s another little tidbit on Muthoni Wambu:

African American professionals can build prosperous careers in the capital city, especially those hoping to play a role in national politics. “There’s a mentality here that there’s enough for everyone; you’re not competing for what feels like a limited number of opportunities,” says 29-year-old Muthoni Wambu.

Like most Washingtonians, Wambu is a transplant. She left New York City’s Upper West Side to study journalism at Howard University and then networked her way into a political fundraising job with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. This was a new aspect of politics for Wambu, who soon discovered that it “brought together my strengths in a way that I’d never anticipated.”

In 2000, Wambu and Vera Baker, another Howard alum, started Baker-Wambu & Associates’......